Using Food and Beverages to Promote Relaxation

There are plenty of ways to reduce stress and relax. From massages and meditation to exercise and therapy, it’s important to find healthy ways to handle the stressors in your life. But did you know that you can use food and beverages to promote relaxation as well? Here are three tasty options that have the added benefit of promoting calm and reducing anxiety and stress.

Sip Something Hot

A hot cup of tea can do wonders to help you relax and calm your nerves. You can buy herbal tea online in a variety of flavors to suit your tastes and health needs. You can also enjoy a hot bowl of vegetable broth soup to help promote relaxation. The heat from these choices helps relax tense muscles, while the nutritious antioxidants can help flush out toxins. For the best results, sip slowly in a quiet, comfy spot.

Enjoy Something Crunchy

There’s something truly satisfying about enjoying a crunchy snack. Eating crispy, crunchy foods helps relieve tension in the jaw and neck, and can help reduce your feelings of stress. Just make sure you’re reaching for healthy options so you don’t ultimately achieve the opposite effect! Enjoy raw fruits and vegetables, heart-healthy nuts and seeds or whole grain crackers instead of chips or fried foods.

Snack on Dark Chocolate

Dark chocolate is full of antioxidants and helps the brain release serotonin, which makes you feel good. In fact, many medical professionals say enjoying an ounce or so of dark chocolate every day can be great for your health and mood. For the healthiest option, choose natural products that contain a minimum of 70% cacao. Also, don’t switch for milk chocolate; it doesn’t have the same health benefits as its dark counterpart.

While food shouldn’t be a source of comfort during tough times, you can use healthy foods to promote well-being. Make smart choices that are known to help relieve tension for the best impact on your stress.

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A Checklist for the New Restaurant Owner

Many people both inside and out of the service industry dream of opening or buying their own restaurant. If you have passion, skill, and determination, you can succeed in this highly-competitive business. From tabc licensing to hiring and opening, here are the major benchmarks.

Get Your Paperwork in Order

After you’ve picked or assumed ownership of your location, make sure the lease, utilities, vendor contracts and food and liquor license are in your name. Be sure you have the right type of tabc licensing and bone up on any area-specific ordinances your city might have.

Understand Your Target Audience and Competition

Successful restaurants fill a need. Whether that’s the type of cuisine you offer, or the environment you serve it in, what you project will attract different types of customers. Decide who you want to go after and plan your décor and menu accordingly to make sure you appeal to them by having the right kind of fare and appropriate things lined up like tabc licensing.

Hire the Best People You Can

If you can build your menu and recipes yourself, great. If not, you need to start by hiring the best executive chef you can find and afford. Either way, you need great, personable waitstaff, experienced cooks, and a team of people who work well under pressure.

Have a Strategy for Soft Launch, Opening, and Marketing

Once you have the pieces in place, carefully craft a strategy to test things out with a soft launch. Choose a reasonable date to open after that and plan a grand opening event. Determine how you will spread the word through conventional advertising, social media, or other means. Don’t stop after you open; the first few months are critical to your future.

Success in the restaurant world comes down to planning and people. Use this checklist to make sure you have your bases covered!

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Planning a Memorable Brunch

When you, your family and friends have consistently overbooked schedules, it may be difficult to find the time to meet for dinner. Hosting a weekend brunch can be an easy way to invite families over – they can arrive at whatever time is convenient from morning until afternoon. Consider a few tips to ensure the event is easy for you to pull off, enabling you to enjoy some good food and even better conversation as different guests visit.

Plan Ahead

Instead of rushing to prepare all of the food in the morning, prep as much as you can the night before. Assemble breakfast casseroles that you bake the next day. Slice sandwich meats, roll savory wraps and mix the batter for waffles and store everything in the refrigerator. Gather the ingredients for brunch beverages at a make-it-yourself bar where the guests can create a cocktail or mocktail of their choice.

Enlist Help

When you’d like to offer an assortment of pastries but don’t have the time to bake, opt for a selection of delicious store-bought items. Head to your favorite bakery Schaumburg at least a week in advance and order scones, muffins, bagels and cookies, for instance, which will be ready to pick up a day in advance. Keep the items in sealed bags or containers so they’ll stay fresh overnight.

Consider the Kids

If several children will be in attendance, have some basic breakfast foods on hand to satisfy any picky eaters. Offer an assortment of cold cereals and milk, plain scrambled eggs or silver dollar pancakes and syrup, for instance.

Throwing a brunch doesn’t have to be a complicated process. The meal is flexible enough for you to offer a wide variety of sweet or savory dishes and finger foods, which means less stress for you and enough choices for your guests to find something that they love to eat.

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